An Adventure in Amends
by Ieyre
Summary: Belle and Baelfire both get sucked through the bean hole portal into an unknown land. With only desolate wasteland stretching for miles around they are left with nothing to do but have a much needed chat about the man they both, sometimes against their better judgement, love. AU, Written pre-2x21.


**I wrote this and posted it on tumblr as a birthday gift for someone before 2x21 aired...obviously now it's firmly in the realm of AU. ****I still think these two need to have an adventure together and do some serious bonding, though. **

Neal Cassidy—known by at least one other person by his given name of Baelfire—had had his share of magical portals. He had thought that time in his life was long over, but apparently a man could only run from his past for so long before it caught up with him. Destiny, fate…he guessed his father wasn't wrong about not being able to escape it. He should've seen it coming, really—in fact, some small part of him did.

He just hadn't expected to get thrown through the portal with…_her_ of all people.

"I know we've been, erm, around each other but we haven't really properly...met." She held out her hand and tentatively smiled. She had a kind smile, he couldn't help but notice. "I'm Belle."

He took it slowly, cautiously, almost as if he thought she might bite. _Belle _had a nicer smile than Lacey, anyway.

"Neal," he answered in kind, releasing her hand as quickly as he'd taken it. "We better get moving—figure out where the hell we were thrown." Neal began to walk, not waiting for her, and Belle had no choice but to follow him.

"I'm afraid you must have an—unfortunate impression of me. I'm so sorry—"

"You've got nothing to apologize for," he cut over her, with a strangely tight and forced nonchalance. Her instincts told her that something wasn't quite right, but Belle pressed on anyway.

"You must understand, the last thing I would ever want to do is cause a rift between you and your father."

He laughed, hollowly.

"Trust me, lady, things were broken long before you got there." Neal coughed. "Don't beat yourself up about it."

She frowned, taken aback by the unexpected coldness. The man she was in love with was many things, but _cold _was not one of them. It didn't suit him, and it certainly didn't suit his son, the same son who had just jammed his hands into his pockets, the picture of boyish petulance in the body of a 35-year-old man.

"It's just—well, I don't know how much they told you about what happened to me—"

"I know you lost your memory—got cursed—look, whatever, I'm glad you got who you are back, no one deserves that..." he trailed off, and it was then that Belle realized he hadn't once looked her in the eye. "If _he _really needs you as much as he says, great. I'm _ecstatic _for you."

There it was.

"You're angry with me," she said, as it dawned on her.

He jerked his head away from her.

"No I'm not," Baelfire protested, voice rising.

"You are," Belle stepped closer to him, and his shoulders tensed up defensively. The unbidden image of his father practically skipping backwards in the Dark Castle rose in her mind. "You think you're going to lose him again—"

"For me to be angry with you, I'd have to care, and I don't, alright?" His temper rose, the apparent hopelessness of their situation pushing him to the brink of his patience. "About him, you, all of it—he's clearly got his priorities, and I'm...done. With _all of _it—"

"Oh, so that's why you're yelling at me about your father," she interjected, calmly. "Because you're not angry and you don't care."

Neal stopped walking abruptly, and his hands fell to his sides. For a moment he simply stared at her. She stared back, undaunted. He wanted to shout, to scream—to kick something, like he was a kid again, because even though he'd been a kid longer than most people were adults, there were things he couldn't forget, he needed to face.

And she barely knew him but she could _tell_ and it was pissing him off.

"Baelfire—" She took another step toward him. He opened his mouth as if to correct her, but seeing the look in her eyes, wisely shut it again. Belle laid one hand gently on his arm. "Your father loves you more than anyone or anything in the world."

His face hardened immediately, and he pulled away.

"Look, with all due respect, you don't know a damn thing about—"

"Would you please look at me when we're speaking?" In spite of her annoyance, a small smile curved upward on her face. "You do the same thing _he_ does when he's hurt and pretending that it doesn't matter. Bottling up your feelings won't make them go away."

Neal breathed hard—the kind of breathing you do after a marathon.

"It's just…" Defeated, he collapsed on a rock, one of the few that littered the desolate landscape of where they'd been sent through. "It's complicated. Things between us are…We're broken."

"The night he found out he could cross the town line to go and find you—I'd never seen his heart so light, so full of hope. I'm sorry that my losing my memories robbed you of that, made it that much _more..._complicated for you."

"I meant what I said before: it's not your fault. He makes his own choices. And if he needs you to be good—"

"He doesn't. He only thinks he does." She sat down next to him on boulder. A small but intensely maternal part of her wanted to put a hand on his shoulder again—but she held back, instead leaning in and saying, conspiratorily, "I won't insult you and pretend he's easy to love. I know Rumple far too well for that."

"I just can't—" He closed his eyes. "Let it go. Forget what he's done."

"You shouldn't forget. But you can forgive him...for him, but more importantly for yourself."

He said nothing, turning her words over in his mind.

"For abandoning me? For choosing power over me?" His temper stirred again. "Do you have any idea what that feels like?"

"Actually, yes, _I do_," she snapped back, her Lacey side urging her to just get it over with and slap him. Belle tempered Lacey, for now—though she's wasn't sure that he didn't need to have sense knocked into him—_like, father, like son_.

"…What?"

"In the Enchanted Forest, the first time we separated...he made me leave. Cast me out. He told me he was doing it because his power meant more to him than I did." He clenched his fist, all wrought-iron resignation. "I know it's nothing to what happened to you, but I think in a small way, at least, that I _do_ understand."

"So why the hell are you still with him?"

She almost laughed at the defiant look on his face—revulsion and morbid curiosity, with a sliver of hope mingled in for good measure.

"Well, he was lying to me. The real reason he let me go was because he was afraid of being hurt."

"So what, you _forgave_ him for that?" She nodded, thinking about how little that seemed to matter after thirty years apart. "You got some capacity for forgiveness, lady."

"Why did you go to the world without magic?"

The question caught him off-guard.

"To get away from it—to start over. A clean slate."

"In a place where you knew no one, had no one?" Her heart ached at the thought of a boy that age, friendless and alone. It was horrible to think of any boy, but Rumple's son… "Why did you _originally_ want to go there, Baelfire? Truly."

Baelfire looked down at the ground and let out a sigh—one that he'd been holding for a long, _long_ time.

"I wanted to be with him," he whispered—a confession, and he said it so softly that she wondered if he was admitting it to them both.

"He never forgot you, you know. When I first went to live with him at his castle, I found a room, filled with children's clothing. _Your_ clothing." The hand that was gripping his leg tightened, his knuckles nearly white. "He never for one second forgot about you," Belle repeated, her gaze steady on him, steadier than he felt in that moment.

"He was so busy trying to get you back...I thought he..." Baelfire rubbed the back of his neck. "I thought he'd stopped..."

"He's not always very good at showing it."

He stared out into the distance, and through years of pain and memories—scars. The invisible ones were the worse kind, but they were the most visible, too. She pushed the memory of a windowless cell to the back of her mind, shivering.

"I wanted to make him who he was before," the man admitted, finally. "I thought I could save him. That sounds so stupid now, I don't even know why I'm saying it out loud." There was just something about her, warmth and some innate talent for understanding that invited his confidence.

"So did I." She smiled, gently, at the curiosity on his face. "I mean, I do want to, still. I wanted to break his curse because I see the ordinary man beneath all of his…magic and posturing. The man who's still afraid of losing the people he loves more than anything. He pushed you away for the same reason he did me." He turned his head slowly to look her in the eye. "He doesn't think he's worth loving."

"That's ridiculous. A guy spends hundreds of years trying to get back to his kid, and when he finally gets there he just..." He kicked the dirt with his toe so hard his foot recoiled. "Shit!"

"He's not always the most rational of man," she said, without irony, as she watched him rub his foot gingerly. "Sometimes I think he prefers puzzles and riddles to their solutions."

"…Did you really try to break his curse?"

"With true love's kiss." Belle smiled, faintly.

"What happened?"

"It would've worked, if he'd let it. It _was _working. I wanted to break it so badly...but what I didn't realize was that only he can choose that—it has to be his decision."

"And you honestly think he'll make that choice? That he's got it in him?"

"...Don't you?"

He didn't say anything, but she could see that at the very least, he wanted to.

"...What're you smiling about?"

"Nothing. It's just—" Before he could step away again, she hugged him, because even with hundreds of years of ache and curses and distance between them, he was Rumple's son.

"What was that for?"

"You have his eyes."

He smiled back at her.

"We're going to get back to them. To _all _of them."

"Yes." The thirst for adventure she'd always carried stirred within her, and she found herself nearly laughing. "Yes, we are."


End file.
